Hh, we haven't done that and we do travel loads. We always book a villa/apartment when away ,eat together early and put our child in bed in our bedroom by 8-9 (it's a holiday after all) and then take turns to get drinks form the bar ,while the other sits in the terrace/garden outside the living room .We never open any windows in the bedroom while outside and keep the doors to the living room and garden open to hear any noise from her.
If we can't afford a real babysitter we happily stay with our child in tow for the entertainment for little while and then retire to our place for early night.
I personally would not feel assured and leave our child alone in any circumstances .

We have decided that until our children are older we only holiday in self catering or B&B accomodation (usually a house with 1 or 2 rooms max) which resolves a lot of the issues in this post! You can use a monitor, you don't need a babysitter and it's as close to being in a home scenario as possible. There are plenty of B&Bs that offer to cook you dinner these days too so you still get to enjoy the evening but not have to worry about the safety of your children.

A babysitter might be appropriate for older kids staying in their own room or family room, but a babysitter wouldn't have worked for us with a 7month-old baby (who loves nothing more than someone to ask for attention from) and is very used to going to sleep on his own in a dark room.

Several people have posted concerns about any random hotel staff having access to their hotel room, I'm surprised that suspicion doesn't extend to random hotel babysitters (sorry that's a bit mischievous)

Finally babysitters cost money. There are so many ways that it can be tempting to throw money at babies to make them safer, really make us feel safer?)
There's a vest you can buy for a baby that sends total information (movement, temperature ,breathing & heart rate, body position, I think it may even monitor the nappy!) via a wi-fi signal to a nice little app so you can completely monitor your baby remotely via the interent, i think it costs about a thousand dollars.
Obviously if you don't get one of these you are a bad parent. I'm wearing one now in fact

Wow that's scary!! My lo is 2.5 and can also open the front door now.... Always keep latch on but terrifying all the same!!

Just thought this might be helpful to add....

If anyone does plan to do this with any children who aren't in cots, I had a scary situation last weekend when I found out my nearly 3 year old could now open the front doors which she proceeded to do at a friend's house before going for a walk by herself down the street. After a few minutes frantic searching, we found her a few doors down talking to a neighbour who was keeping her occupied until they spotted a concerned parent. Just in case I wasn't paying attention, she then proudly showed me the next day that she could do just the same in our house.

A couple of other posters have already mentioned the possibility of kids wandering around but I now take this possibility very seriously and given I can't think of a way to mitigate this risk entirely, I wouldn't leave my kids unsupervised.

PS. did I mention she had no clothes on either because she'd been playing in the paddling pool.....?

An issue the mccann case exposed was that people had been getting into bed with children and it was hushed up , maybe not to put off tourists? Not all hotel staff are crb checked...... 9 year olds are vulnerable........

The places we've done this are quite small guest houses / Riads where there are less than 12 rooms that all surround a central dining area. That's what I mean it really depends on where you are staying. When we've slept in a separate room from our children, they were literally next door - literally closer than they are at home. I think guest houses like this can be great for families precisely because they are like staying in a big home. Going to dinner at guest houses like this is really no different than going downstairs for dinner at home - it's not all the same as going to the shops.

And no, I wouldn't leave my kids at this age and go to the shops...a few more years.

Personally, if staying away we have either eaten earlier in the evening with our child (easier to digest a meal) or we get a baby sitter. Most family friendly hotels can book a baby sitter if given 24 hours notice and it allows us to relax knowing someone is there in case of an emergency.

As with all parenting decisions, it's your call. If you're not comfortable then I'd say don't do it as you will never relax in the restaurant. If you're only worried about what other people think but feel happy with your decision then go for it and have a lovely dinner. We did the monitor thing once and I have to say that I didn't relax at all and went to check on my daughter every 20 mins. So for me I wouldn't do it again. But that doesn't mean that I don't think anyone should do it. My children walk to school once they are in year 5 and I've had raised eyebrows from some parents. But I'm comfortable with it as are my children and I don't feel I have to check with other parents first. Every decision we make as parents has to take risk into account but what's highly risky to one person is not risky at all to another. Hope you have a lovely time whatever you choose to do.

What's wrong with a (human) babysitter?

We just did this, for the first time this Sun eve at nice hotel in Cotswolds

No other dinners guests minded at all, cos we relied on light flicker function on the audio monitor (volume turned to zero).
Our 7month old was in cot and is admittedly a pretty good sleeper.
However we did choose a hotel and room that meant we were pretty close to room at dinner - as that made us feel more comfortable.
In fact at the bar after dinner we were able to see our hotel room door!
You have to accept that your monitor may not work properly (easy to test out beforehand with your partner) and have a plan B, I know of at least one hotel (in Wiltshire) that offers monitors that they have tested out work everywhere in the hotel.


IMHO it is a horrible thing to mention the McCann case in this context- it's not even an equivalent example (as someone has sensibly pointed out already) they did not have a monitor and were quite far away.
It's very important for parents to have some time away from the little one, especially so on holiday and there's quite enough self-generated circular parental guilt knocking around (espec if it's your first) without such flippant yet erroneous comparisons being made.

As for "risk of fire" well statistically a well-run hotel is probably safer than your own home, but again smallish distance to room will prob make you feel better about that too!

We've gone both ways with this!

Now that our children are a bit older (2.5 to 9), we typically do give the kids an early dinner, put them to bed, and then come back down for dinner. We don't have a baby monitor anymore, but our older children are quite capable of calling or walking the little ones over to us should they need anything. We've done this mostly in small boutique hotels / guest houses that were family friendly and that felt very safe. It's really not all that different from putting them to bed at home!

I personally think cranky, over tired babies or toddlers are far more disruptive than a baby monitor. Even with our school age kids, we're still practicing manners with a goal of having them really able to be sensible in a nice restaurant. Kids have to eat and we want them to enjoy dinner with our family, but we also try not to have them in nice restaurants after about 7:30 or 8:00 when all the kid stuff we're teaching them goes OUT the window.

I think the most important thing is safety - and you know your child best. I would also check with the hotel to see how they feel. We found that guest houses on our recent trip to Morocco were highly accommodating of children and families. Going down to have dinner and tea in the courtyard of our riad in Marrakech...and then having a drink up on the rooftop balcony...such an escape all while our kids slept! We also had our 4 children share a room and slept in the room next door to ours...again felt just like home, but only worked because the Riad was safe and family friendly.

In response to Petal - I never said there was "no bigger risk in hotels", but that there is also a tiny risk of kidnap or fire in our own homes and we still use monitors there. Obviously there is a bigger risk in hotels - but it's still a very tiny risk and one that some of us are willing to take and others are not.

I agree with the above posters that specific factors such as layout of the hotel, proximity to the restaurant, and how large the hotel is all have to be considered. But I don't agree that you can compare this to the McCann case - they weren't using a monitor, had an open window, and weren't in the same building.

It really comes down to what parents are comfortable with.

Imagine this scenario... There you are enjoying dinner with video monitor on the table, bubba sleeping soundly! The fire alarm sounds in the building and all the guests are evacuated, you try and explain to the hotel staff that you need to go up stairs to get your baby. They are trained to evacuate people out of the building and tell you to go outside and wait for the fire brigade to go and get your baby. An unlikely scenario I grant you, but not impossible fires do happen and fire alarms do malfunction and people are evacuated out of buildings all the time, monitors visual or audio lull us into a false sense of security that an increased distance between you and your child is safe when maybe it won't be.

Sorry to go off-topic slightly but what iPhone monitoring apps have you been using in hotels? I have found a wide choice and just wondered which ones are best.

Re using a baby monitor, so far I must say every hotel we have been to had the problem of thick walls/room miles away from the restaurant. We only managed to do it once when our daughter got very tired at dinner (the hotel messed up our order one night) so she started crying very loudly while we were waiting for dessert. Our room was above the restaurant and next to reception (so slightly harder for random people to let themselves into our room), and we only left her there for 20mins, and the monitor worked perfectly as we were so close. I think it all depends on what you're comfortable doing and on the age of the children.